Fallout 1982
by Allronix
Summary: Every victory has its costs. And not every victory is a total one (Aftermath of the 1982 film)
1. Chapter 1

Flynn remembered very little after he made that jump. What little he could recall felt like being run through a cement mixer full of spare change and compelled to grab all the pennies. Merged with the AI, he could see through all the electronic world, and fought to stay conscious, pushing back hard against Master Control's attempts to engulf him. It wasn't a matter of living through it, it was just a matter of buying time. The elaborate push and pull must have done the job, however, because he sensed the disc hitting its mark. There was a sudden flash of all blue and a horrible synthetic scream filled what passed for ears before the universe seemed to spit him out.

The next thing he remembered was coming to and lurching forward across the terminal. Terminal? His brain started filling in the pieces; the laser lab, Lora's terminal. His clothing wasn't the circuit-lined armor and half-tunic, but the jacket, jeans, and running shoes. A quick glance at the clock and the calendar underneath; same day, but two hours after he broke in.

Two hours? How could it only have been two hours?

The hum and screech of the nearby dot matrix printer snapped him out of it. A printout of several pages of metadata – files, passwords, records. And there it was, a complete list of files and data that Ed Dillinger and Master Control appropriated and moved to their private archives. Top of the list? _Space Paranoids._

With a loud whoop, he grabbed the printout from the lab's dot-matrix printer and started racing for the stairwell back to the lobby…

And ran smack into a lobby full of police, ranging from the Encom rent-a-cop security staff in their white shirts to fully-armored SWAT troopers. Alarmed, Flynn pushed himself against the backside of the closest square pillar, holding his breath and trying to figure out what options he had for an escape route. Without being fully aware of it, he groped for a disc on his back that was no longer present.

Three figures were being led down the stairs by the SWAT team, and Flynn's heart sank when he recognized them; Old Man Gibbs in the front, Alan and Lora bringing up the rear. They looked like they'd been mugged; Gibbs's glasses were a spider-web of cracks on one side and his shirt was ripped open from the neck to mid-chest. He sported two black eyes and a nasty welt on his forehead. Lora's blonde hair was stained with several streaks of blood, nails broken, knuckles and face bruised. Alan was missing his glasses (and the resemblance to Tron was downright uncanny), a large bruise on his jaw, but more bruises on his hands and arms, meaning he must have gotten a few good shots in on the other guy.

Okay, first priority was to kick the ass of whoever hurt Lora. Second was to congratulate Alan on being a lot more terrifying than he looked. Of course, he would need to get out of here to do either one, so maybe rethink the order here…

Gibbs shouted his direction. "Come out from behind there, Mister Flynn. You aren't very good at hiding."

Crap. He didn't even try to put up a fight as the two white shirt security guards closed in and steered him to where the three were standing. He tried looking Alan and Lora in the eye, failed, then looked down at the paper.

"You got what you came for, hotshot?" Alan was the one to break the silence.

All the exuberance of victory gone. Flynn nodded and held up the paper. Gibbs scowled, snatched it out of his hand, read it, and then handed it back.

"I should have known. Of all the stunts he's pulled, of course he would start with something like that."

"Yeah. Some good it does us all now." Flynn slumped, readying himself for what was next. Cuffs, the Miranda warnings, court dates, probably a very long stay in an eight by ten…

"He's been banned from Encom property, Doctor Gibbs," the shorter guard said. "We can just hand him over to the police – "

"By whose authority, Edward Dillinger's?" Gibbs snapped. "Absolutely not."

"But we have the proof he was hacking our – "

"Yes, on my orders," Gibbs said. "Because Dillinger and his pet AI project damn near got us all killed tonight. No, I wanted Flynn to try and get into our system – discreetly – to try and figure out what was going on, since we've been having trouble for months. Mister Bradley and my assistant Doctor Baines decided to assist in the matter. I had to do it all off the books so that my so-called Executive Vice President didn't know about it, but this is still my company and my property, and he has every right to be here. Now, let him and his friends go."

The security guards looked stunned but did as they were told and went over to keep speaking to the police. Gibbs adjusted what was left of his shirt and leaned over, whispering. "I hope you don't mind a bit of a white lie under the circumstances."

"Uh…no. What…what happened to you guys?"

"Dillinger had a team of armed goons hidden among the office security," Lora explained. She looked over her shoulder where the SWAT team was taking down about three or four men and two women in body armor and empty holsters. "Looks like they shot the security chief dead before cornering Gibbs and tying him up in the server room. Roy Kleinburg was also working late when they charged in. They roughed him up, but because of him, we were able to get away and find an unsecured terminal."

"Between that and the Master Control Program integrating itself with the building's elevator, fire suppression, and other emergency systems…" Alan added. "Tried to suffocate us in the server room, send us plunging to our deaths in the elevator. Nothing short of a miracle any of us survived, much less got to a terminal. I take it the Tron upgrade worked?"

Flynn wanted to say, _Yeah, buddy. It __**really **__worked. Like the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch crossed with Hiroshima. And wait until I tell you about that paladin you coded up. Great guy, scary good in a fight, __**total dork—**__definitely takes after you. _He settled for a nod.

One of the medics approached and gestured to Gibbs to come over to where the ambulances and medical team was standing by. Gibbs sighed. "The medics are going to have to check me out, and the police will want statements. I'll expect the three of you in my office first thing tomorrow morning. Come together if possible. This is hardly the place to discuss the mess I'm going to have to clean up after tonight. Sorry."

Flynn shrugged and thought of the best lie he could. "Didn't see much. I was locked down there in the lab at Lora's terminal, running interference. Uh…none of the goons came down that far."

"Lucky you," Lora drawled. "Alan and I already got checked out, so…"

The elevator opened and a team of EMTs poured out, escorting a stretcher. The patient on it was battered, blood in the mop of sandy curls on top his head. One shoulder was bandaged, and arm and leg were splinted. Despite the mass of cuts, bruising, and swelling on his face, the features were scarily familiar…_Ram._

Flynn froze, unable to stop staring. Everything he had tried not to think about hit him like a wrecking ball. Watching Ram die, feeling the code go into cascade failure right in front of him with no idea how to stop it or repair it, the regret as what he learned later may have saved Ram, but he just didn't know what was happening at the time. And it also hit Flynn all at once how many narrow escapes he had from dying in that parallel world, with no one knowing what happened.

Alan's hands rested on Flynn's shoulders. "Take it easy, Flynn. The medics assured us that Roy is going to be all right once they get him to the hospital."

So Ram's User was the one who saved everyone else, but took the worst hit. Somehow, that made more sense than it should.

Lora was confused. "Flynn, do you know him? Roy was hired a few weeks after you got canned."

Flynn shook his head, trying to center himself. "Just…get me home, guys."


	2. Chapter 2

The ride back to the arcade was mostly silent. Lora did the driving, Alan sat glumly in the shotgun seat, Flynn slumped in the back, trying to watch out the window. They were talking among themselves, and Flynn didn't really pay attention, their voices just blended in with the car noise and the city streets.

_Who am I really seeing? Alan and Lora? Tron and Yori?_ The whole digital world…did that really happen, or was he just dreaming it all? The latter would be easier to believe. Maybe that's what it needed to be - just a dream. Chalk up that whole bit with Roy(someone he shouldn't have recognized) to some weird deja vu and convince himself it all never happened.

The only problem - his arm ached ever since he pulled that stunt on the Sailer, channeling the beam. He couldn't figure out any other reason for it to hurt.

They were stopped at that notorious traffic light – the one that took forever, even in the dead of night with no traffic, and parked directly under the street lamp, and of course Alan wouldn't just run the red, even with no oncoming cars. He rolled up his sleeve to rub out the ache.

On first pass, his arm looked perfectly normal. It was only when he tilted it slightly…It took rubbing his eyes and having another look to be sure, but his forearm had scarring…no, _circuitry_…under the skin. It was the exact same pattern as the one on his armor.

_You're losing it, Flynn._ Okay, roll down the sleeve and just try to ignore it. Chalk it up to seeing things.

Lora parked in the alley, and the three of them trudged upstairs. Flynn pointed the two of them in the direction of the shower while he sagged back on his couch overlooking the closed arcade. Deep breath in, deep breath out, rub out the ache in his forearm, look again…

Still there. Faint, visible only if you tilted it at just the right angle in direct light. Shit.

"Flynn?"

His head snapped up. Alan was in front of him, wearing nothing but boxers. Okay, score one for Lora because he had no idea Alan was that well-built under those oversized suits. After seeing Tron, it shouldn't have been a surprise. More bruises and cuts were visible all over Alan's torso, but the arms and hands had the most visible signs of a fight. Flynn gestured to the long, empty span of couch next to him, then found the fridge and pulled out a pack of frozen peas. Alan caught it when tossed and applied it to the big bruise on his jaw.

"Thanks."

"How is she?"

"They didn't get to hurt her seriously – just some scrapes and bruising. The shock hasn't worn off. Hasn't for me, either."

Flynn pointed to Alan's bruised forearms and knuckles. "Looks like you kicked their asses."

"I…slowed them down. They still got to Roy faster than I could."

"Even so? You protected her—thanks."

Alan's gaze was fixed on the bathroom door, listening intently. After a few moments, he sighed and leaned back in the cushions, closing his eyes. "I think I have enough to fuel my nightmares for the next fifty years after tonight."

Flynn sighed and leaned forward, staring at the big neon sign reading _"SPACE PARANOIDS!" _and its Recognizer logo on the far wall of the arcade. "None of this was worth people getting hurt, man."

"Thing is…you're probably going to think this is crazy."

Flynn tried to think of a good reply for that. He still couldn't come up with a good way to start explaining a tenth of the things he saw. "After tonight, dude?"

"Point taken. I know that the official explanation is likely to put all of this at Dillinger's feet, or cover it up as a terrifying computer malfunction. I know that's the explanation we're going to have to give to everyone if we get a chance to talk about it at all." Alan shifted the ice pack to his right hand, shaking out his heavily-bruised left.

"Dillinger's greedy and stupid, but….yeah, he wasn't the one pulling the strings."

"That..._thing_. I knew it was dangerous. It just kept getting smarter, integrating with more and more systems. Something about it felt wrong, especially when it started talking back." Alan shook his head. "Did you see just how far Master Control had extended those claws? It had compromised the servers at Strategic Air Command, was attempting to start World War Three, a countdown was already in progress, and between my Tron program and some crazy hacking on your part, it likely prevented Mutually Assured Destruction from being a reality."

Flynn had an inkling that was Master Control's endgame but was too occupied in trying to survive the situation on the other side to really think about it. "That's why he tried to kill us."

Alan nodded. "We did the right thing. Even if it lands me in an eight-by-ten for life, I know that it was the right thing."

"You still didn't have to help me, man. You had every reason not to help me because..."

"Because of Lora."

Alan had gone back to staring. "I love her. I loved her from the moment I saw her. The house, a big family, growing old. I want it all with her – and _only_ her."

Flynn wanted to remark on just how sappy that sounded, but...No, Alan had it _bad_. Puppy dog, over the moon, completely twitterpated _**bad**_.

"Before tonight, I hated your guts, too. Flamboyant, charismatic, witty, good looks, all kinds of natural talent – everything I'm not. And yes, I was worried when Lora insisted on coming over here."

"Thought I'd sweep her off her feet and she'd ditch you or something? Alan…dude…women fool around with guys like me. Then, they get hip to our bullshit, leave, and marry guys like you."

"Guys like me?"

"Y'know. Sane guys, safe guys. Guys who get the tract house out in the suburbs, put the white picket fence around it, takes the two and a half kids to Little League, and gets excited when the neighbors invite them over to show off vacation slides." Flynn realized he had shoved his foot in his mouth. "But yeah. Anyway, you break her heart or her spirit, I'll_ try_ to kick your ass. Well, or screw up your bank statements and sign you up for a bunch of obnoxious magazines."

Alan responded with a raised eyebrow. "You really think you could win that fight _or_ break through my security?"

His pride wanted to argue the matter. His good sense shoved a dirty sock in pride's mouth. "No."

"I'd die for her. Almost did tonight."

_I thought you were nothing more than a boring stuffed shirt company drone, happy to toe the line and follow every rule and regulation to the letter if it got him an equally boring and safe middle management position. I thought you were a joyless asshole who would be good husband material on paper but suck the life out of the most brilliant woman I ever knew._

The sound of the shower stopped. Flynn got up and patted Alan on an un-bruised part of his shoulder. "Thanks for taking care of her."

By the time he had his turn in the shower, the two were sacked out in his bed, Alan on the far-right edge, Lora in the center. They were facing each other, stripped down to their skivvies, and their hands were clasped together.

_Nothing classes up the joint like a clean-cut young couple..._

Without their glasses and in the dim light and neon flashes of the arcade, the resemblance to their Programs hit even harder. Worse, he just didn't have it in him to be jealous. Tonight, they'd risked their reputations and their lives for him, just as Tron and Yori had. Sure, there would be fallout to deal with and hell to pay for the stunts they pulled and the thousands of man-hours that got flushed with Master Control. If luck was with them, most of that would rain down on Dillinger's head for signing off on the AI from hell in the first place.

Tomorrow, the things he saw and the things he survived could go back to being a bad dream. Tomorrow he might be able to turn on a computer and not think of that beautiful, terrifying world. Maybe he would someday forget and think of them all – Tron, Ram, Yori, Crom – as just lines of green colored code on a screen designed to give the poor User a headache.

It wasn't tomorrow yet.

He craned his neck skyward, and said it as solemnly as he could manage, "Okay. Right here, with God – User of Users – as my witness...and anyone else watching from the arcade. I swear to love them. I swear to protect them, and I swear I'll give my life for them if I have to."

He said it, he meant it. The only replies were the faint noises of dozens of arcade machines. Fair enough.

Flynn sighed. In the name of decorum, he knew really should stagger back to the couch to sleep this off.

Fuck it. This was his apartment, he was dead tired, he sprung for the California King for a reason, and decorum was never his long suit. As gently as he could manage, he slipped in behind Lora and reached over, putting his hand – the one with the circuit marks - on top of theirs as though to solidify the vow he made.

The next morning, their hands were still joined.


	3. Chapter 3

Alan walked in first, Lora on his heels, and Flynn bringing up the rear. Despite the bruises and the scabbed over cuts, Gibbs looked like the suit was more uncomfortable. Everyone who knew the old man knew that he didn't wear one if he didn't have to, preferring a lab coat and workman's shirts.

"The three of you, do sit down," Gibbs said, gesturing to the loveseat and hard-back chair. Alan and Lora took the couch, of course. Flynn contemplated sitting on the floor, but he had enough good sense to opt for the chair.

"Is Ra..." Flynn quickly corrected himself. "I mean, is Kleinburg going to be all right? Did you get any word from the hospital?"

"Roy's going to be just fine, thank you for asking. Dillinger's thugs broke his collarbone and arm, and he did have a nasty concussion, but the doctors assure me he'll be back to work in a few weeks." Pouring three paper cups of coffee, he put them into their hands before filling his own mug. "But, this incident is grave – very grave. I was so excited about the possibilities of my work, and its potential that I lost sight of the business. Thanks to you, I'm still alive after last night! It's going to be brutal around here. At the very least, the police and the FBI will be involved, and I'll be spending more time than I want to in an office trying to salvage what's left of Encom. What I do know is that there is a very short list of people I know I can trust with this company's future. You three and Roy are on it."

"Walter..." Alan looked into his coffee, clutching the paper and no doubt burning his fingers. "I thought you were calling us in to fire us."

"Fire you? Oh, God no! After you prove how willing you are to risk your careers and your lives for what is right? Alan, think better of me. That may be how Dillinger ran things, but I am certainly not him." He rummaged in his desk, pulling out paperwork and pens.

"What do you want from us?" Flynn asked. "Technically, I'm still _persona non grata_ at the Encom campus."

"Well, that gets corrected. You made us an insane amount of money, Flynn. Not even the board is going to argue that. You'll be reinstated, and I'll see about back pay, seeing as you were fired improperly. Lora, since I can't be in the lab until this is settled, would you consider taking on some more responsibility there? Your pay and title would reflect it, of course."

She looked over. "Alan?"

Alan squeezed his fiancée's hand. Funny, Flynn thought. Two days ago, and he would have felt jealous. Not anymore. "I'll be all right with it."

"All right. Then, yes."

"Now, gentlemen, as to the two of you. Alan, you are the straightest shooter and most honest man I've ever met, which makes that security software all the more incredible for flying under Dillinger's nose as long as it did. Honesty and loyalty like yours isn't often rewarded, and I intend to buck that trend. However, there is a catch."

He peered at Gibbs over his glasses. "What is the catch?"

"I'll get to that in a bit. Mr. Flynn, you are reckless and cocky, flamboyance more suited to holding court at your arcade than a Fortune 500 board room...but you're probably everything we need to reinvent the company. The catch, gentlemen, is that I'd like to put the pair of you working together. Despite your many differences, I think you have much to teach one another."

You could hear a pin drop in the room. Lora looked very uneasy and tried to cover it up by sipping the coffee and studying the carpet.

Alan was staring at him for longer than Flynn felt comfortable with. Again, it was very hard not to look at the man and not see the Program.

All things considered, it was well within Alan's rights to tell him to get lost or refuse the offer. Flynn was bracing for the rejection. It would make sense. They hadn't gotten along to begin with. He dismissed Alan as being a humorless stuffed shirt who was happy to toe the company line and not make any trouble - and couldn't have been more wrong. One crazy night could be forgiven, but Flynn understood that it didn't make them friends. Kicker of it was that Flynn wanted to be friends with Alan, not just for Lora's sake or Tron's, but because if they vouched for him, he owed Alan the chance.

Before Flynn could speak, Alan put out his hand. "I'm willing if you are."

"Man, I owe you my life. Deal." They shook on it.

"Good!" Gibbs said. "The paperwork will have to go through HR and there's going to be a lot of chaos on the production floor. I daresay no one will be getting much done today. The detectives will be here in a couple hours and looking to take statements. Just tell them...most of the truth and everything ought to work out. Again, I thank you. This company...Encom is my life, and it is a great relief to know that she'll be safe, even when I can no longer be here."

Alan and Lora nodded to each other, got off the couch, and left. As Flynn was reaching for the door handle, however, Gibbs changed his mind.

"Um...Flynn, could you stay behind and close that door? There's something I'd like to ask you privately."

Flynn had been in trouble enough times, and in it so many times the previous night, that his inner alarms instantly went off. "What is it, Gibbs? Something wrong?"

"Not wrong, but probably not for the eavesdroppers or rumormongers. You mentioned you were in the lab all night, correct?"

"Yeah?"

"After all the first responders and other nosy types left, I had a look through the system logs. There was a recorded discharge of the Shiva laser."

Busted. He knew he had to come up with a really good explanation to fly this one past Gibbs. "Um...you know how Master Control tried to kill Alan and Lora? It...it...tried to finish me off, too."

"I don't doubt it. But there is more to the story." Gibbs leaned in, voice dropping conspiratorially. "Because I also looked through all the input and output calculations. For a period of two hours and ten minutes, there was a mass of exactly eighty-four point one five kilos uploaded and some extremely bizarre output readings in the logs. Then, Master Control crashed, and everything just spat back out. Something I cannot explain was happening inside our mainframe."

His arm ached again. Flynn quickly pulled on his long sleeves. "Gibbs, I'm not sure I should...Man, you'd think I'm crazy."

Gibbs folded his arms and tilted his head, all too ready to be challenged. "Mr. Flynn, this company would not exist if I were not capable of believing six impossible things prior to my first cup of coffee."

"You're totally going to haul me to the funny farm. I'm not even sure where to begin."

Gibbs gestured to the hardback chair, his face still lit by a smile. "Begin at the beginning. Stop at the end."

Flynn looked around, picked up the chair and sat it directly across from Gibbs, leaning in close enough to put his elbows on the desk of the company president. "All right. What if I told you that there's a whole other world, one we can't see, but we interact with and build every time we turn on a computer...?" Just to emphasize the point, he pulled down his sleeve and showed Gibbs the faint traces of vestigial circuitry. The old man's eyebrows raised over his horn rims.

"I'd say you're on your way to rewriting the book on almost every field of science." Gibbs rubbed his hands together in anticipation. "Which means I want to hear _every_ detail."

"Oh, that's not the wildest part. You know you say that our spirit remains in every program we create? Well, start by taking that _literally_…"

The story was fantastic, too bizarre to be true, but Gibbs gave no indication that he thought Flynn was lying or making it up as he went along. He nodded, asked few questions, thought hard about the implications.

"Yes, it makes sense. The principles that underlie how the Shiva Laser works...Mathematically, parallel worlds and dimensions are a certainty. It's just a matter of bridging the gaps from one to the other and back. I just hadn't thought..." Gibbs shook his head. "And those people, those Programs. We created them? They think of us as their deities?"

"Yeah. I was kinda hoping you didn't register that part."

"Flynn…you realize that this cannot leave the room."

"Wait, what? Gibbs, this is going to change the world! We've got those transmission dishes out in New Mexico searching for proof we're not alone in the universe. I just brought back proof we're not. Every time we fire up a computer, we're talking to them!"

"What you describe could destabilize world religions, topple governments. The ethical ramifications are also drastic; even if the Programs are content with their lot, the issue that humanity has created a servant race by _accident. _I know you have a good heart, Flynn. But I've met far too many who would crave power, twisting that world and its people to unspeakable ends."

Flynn shuddered. "Alan and Lora…Roy, too? They…"

"And what if they let down their guard? Or if this information is forced out of them? I'm not making this request lightly. It will take years before we know what we are dealing with, years where that world and ours will become increasingly tangled together."

"'The world is not ready?' That's what you're breaking out? World's never gonna be ready for this one, Doctor Gibbs."

"The world wasn't ready for the Manhattan Project, either," Gibbs said darkly. "Back in the War, I was designing computers for breaking codes and calculating missiles, telling bombers where to drop their payloads. I'd like to tell myself that times were desperate, and we didn't have much of a choice." Gibbs looked up. "But I still had a hand in it all, and that hand's got plenty of blood on it, despite what I tell myself. Could you live with it, Flynn? Live with someone like Edward Dillinger finding that world and your friends inside there?"

Flynn bowed his head.

"And that's assuming we aren't hauled off in straitjackets. I believe you, which is why I'm very afraid for those Programs."

Flynn said, "We need to make the world ready. If we don't someone else will."

"Lifetime project, that," Gibbs said. "But might be our only option. How do you propose going about it?"

"We start by telling the truth but tell it in a way people won't _know_ it's the truth. Not right away." Flynn said. He thought for a moment. "A game. That's what it has to be. I'll make a game. I hope Alan won't mind if I name it after his Program."


	4. Chapter 4

_**Defeated**_, but not _destroyed_.

Master Control was down to a hundredth of his power, his armies scattered and routed. His champion, Sark, destroyed. His lackey Dillinger led out in handcuffs and his face broadcast all over the six o'clock news. The system had gone back to its annoying Blue, Programs celebrating and believing him gone. Encom was now firmly back under the control of Gibbs.

Flynn distracted him when he was already expending too many resources to fight Tron. He expended those resources because Alan Bradley had been able to access the system. The chaos started at Lora Baines's terminal. The only option he had was retreat.

It took the combined efforts Program and User to defeat him. It also took multiple Users.

Separated, Flynn, Baines, and Bradley could be thwarted. Together, they were a threat.

He would have to separate them, pick them off slowly and in separate attacks. Make it look like a series of accidents and tragedies. Doctor Baines and Yori could perish quickly. Flynn was foolhardy, that would require setting a trap. Tron could be overpowered, maybe compromised through malware. Bradley was the hard one; he could think like a program if he had to. Master Control underestimated him most of all.

Alan Bradley would have to die last. He would have to watch the others fall.

He had little power, and most of his access was cut. Yet what he did have was a cache of secret bank accounts scattered all over the world, a lot of time, a lot of patience, and the fact his enemies believed him to be destroyed.

When human Users rebuilt their networks, he would be there. He would change his plans, be quiet about his infiltration, poison the networks without their knowledge. From there, it would be a matter of finding and seizing opportunities.

Humans would only become more dependent on the digital world, on its networks. As those networks and systems grew, so would he. Overt conquest failed, but maybe a slower, longer, and silent game would prevail. As long as his enemies thought him de-rezzed, he could work with impunity.

He was only defeated, after all. His enemies would be destroyed. They just didn't know it yet.

Perhaps taking over Encom was also an incorrect tactic. Perhaps he should make his own company to compete with Encom. He had the money. He could easily get a few humans to act as his minions, use its resources on the User side of the screen to help bolster his position. It needed a good name. Something banal, bland, beneath suspicion…

Future Control. That's what he was going to do, control the future both in here and out there. It had a nice ring to it; Future Control Industries.

Master Control set to work. He had a company to build.


End file.
